Is het democratisch! westers neo-liberalisme de enig mogelijke (messianistische) toekomst zoals onze vriend Fukuyama in zijn The End of History and the Last Man, 1992 (fall Berlin Wall 1989)) betoogde ?

*** Let u op de periode: 2000-2005. Zie het interessante artikel over cooking the books (feb. 2015) als u geïnteresserd bent:
[[
Greece’s application for EU membership in 1999 was rejected because its budget deficit in relation to its GDP was over 3 percent, the cutoff line for joining. That’s where Goldman Sachs came in. For a fee rumored to be $200 million (some say three times that), the multinational giant essentially cooked the books to make Greece look like it cleared the bar. Then Greece’s political and economic establishment hid the scheme until the 2008 crash shattered the illusion.
]]

Bring back them socks and pots !
Last night the ministers of finance of the EU decided upon the way new bank crises should be handled.

Agreement was reached on the order of liability.
1) Firstly shareholders and bondholders shall be held accountable.
2) Then the ‘banking sector’. Nothing specified here, just that they shall start some kinda fund.
3) Then the ‘rich’ accountholders, with -savings- above 100K.
4) Accountholders ( savings accounts) below 100K are left untouched.

This was supposedly done to move the liability away from the taxpayers (!not) / the governments (BLAIRLIKE SPIN, nowadays common ‘to-serve-you-better’ truthtalk).

So government is also moving away from, shaking it’s hands free of, letting it prowl freely, of the banking sector. It’s possible disasters are ‘privatized’. Just like health-care, railways, building corporations etc. were privatized before (long live the liberal parties of our continent!). Again, all this to ‘save’ the tax-payer.

In the new configuration who do you think is the most powerful group (answer = 2) ? Who is the least powerful group (answer = 3, not 4 because of electoral considerations). Which group is most on the slippery slide for future adjustments (answer = 4) ?

Remember that with the first and following bail-outs of Greece the european banking sector -did- contribute, allbeit with quite some resistance and in ever smaller portions. When Cyprus came along this did not even enter into the discussion. (So much for Cyprus as a template for future bail-ins, objective is clear: go after the private saver.) The original bail-in plan even had savers -below- 100K accountable. This was dropped after some political upheaval and luckily we could smokescreen it all with barbarian russians.

So what will probably happen next, say if Italy starts running into problems ?

The very ‘rich’ savers will already have found all kinds of ways to safeguard their money. And the nice bankers and financial sector will get a nice business boost finding these loopholes.

The ‘rich’ savers will try but will fail to get their money safe. They will be mercilessy gutted. (Please note: this might well include your parents who have sold their house (where you grew up in) and moved into a nice, rollator/wheelchair accommodating, comfy studio.)

After the next crisis, or in a year, or two, the 100K limit will be lowered to 90K then to 80K etc.

People will start putting their money in socks under the bed and pots in their gardens. Your money will be as safe as in the Middle Ages. There’s a good confidence building, economy stimulating measure for you !

Bottom line is that the new agreement makes the savers accountable. You put money in the bank because it is not safe in a pot in your garden or a sock under the bed. And maybe to get a measly interest. You are -not- investing in the bank. You are -not- part of the financial sector (watch out for this upcoming mingling of concepts in the near future). You should -not- be held accountable.

It should be clear that the banks phucked up in a major way over the last decade. Monitoring and surveillance of the banks and financial sector (who have the real WMD’s, Weapons of Mass-Destruction in their hands) has only marginally increased. This should be done by governments and the sector itself.

The best way to incite this increased surveillance and better banking practises is to lay the liability solely with the banks themselves (group 2). To make privates savers liable, is not only unjust and most probably economically counter productive, it removes this incentive. (That group 1 is liable is obvious.)

And as for you as private, little, citizen (Calimero as we’d say here in the nl), what to do ?
“Bring back them socks and pots !”

– — –ps:
– In practise it probably won’t work. The bank’s leveraging is probably too high for groups 1 + 2 (who’ll bemoan, bewail, bitch that they are needed for ‘recovery’) and 3 to handle. Group 4 can’t save them either. So the governments (or ~ECB) will step in again, meaning you. And we’ll be right back where we started. Only this time private savings wiped out, and banks have a formalized ‘contract’ for limited liability. Maybe it can just handle a crisis of the size of, say Cyprus.
– I don’t have > 100K at the bank. Far from it, I would say :-(